White House emails retrieved from Bush administration records reveal that top Bush Justice Department officials circulated a memo falsely blaming Al Gore for U.S. failure to get Osama bin Laden. The apocryphal Osama-Al Gore-Oliver North story, already debunked on snopes.com, was forwarded internally to administration personnel by David M. Israelite, Deputy Chief of Staff and Counselor to Attorney Gen. John Ashcroft (pictured above right).

The existence of such politicized emails may help explain why millions of emails sent to and from the previous White House have gone missing despite rules for preserving presidential records. This particular email, spreading a bogus rumor, has not been reported before.............